


No Space Between

by Fenix21



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, M/M, One Shot, long winded bit of nothing that goes nowhere, outsider pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-30
Updated: 2015-07-30
Packaged: 2018-04-12 00:19:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4458077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fenix21/pseuds/Fenix21
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam and Dean in Bobby's garage with a couple of teenage girls on a hot day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Space Between

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lochinvar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lochinvar/gifts).



> Don't get excited...nothing happens.
> 
> This little thing has been an utter and complete PITA, going through--I kid you not--half a dozen iterations before finally settling on...whatever _this_ is. God bless Lochinvar for giving me a wonderful idea to absolutely ruin, but here it is, and this was the original prompt:
> 
>  
> 
> _Dean and Sam in SD working for Bobby on a project at the auto yard without shirts, of course- NO, BOBBY WILL NEVER DIE IN MY WORLD - and a group of teenage girls come by with their boyfriends to look for parts - through the eyes of the teenage girls. And the girls start picking up clues..._
> 
>  
> 
> Well, it strayed from that a little, well maybe a lot, and outsider POV is the bane of my existence and...oh, just read the damn thing...

Both boys were near their age.

Well, at least the tall, skinny one with the sweet dimples and color changing eyes was, Tana was pretty certain. Though, Janey would much prefer the other one, the harder one with the shoulders so solid it was a sure bet he could stand in for Atlas on a moment's notice. He was obviously older, by a few years at least. His sharp, cold eyes said experience had gotten the better of him, rooting out the naiveté that still clung to his younger companion. Janey preferred that. The older ones. The more experienced ones. She always claimed they had more to offer girl.

'You boys don't happen to have anything cool to drink, do you?' Janey asked, and Tana recognized the honey in her voice that she usually used to convince Dashel to take her out on Friday night instead of going with the guys to the bowling alley or out on I90 to drag their cars and test out this week's latest modifications.

Poor Dash. Janey may have come here with her boyfriend, but that wasn't going to stop her from arranging herself against the side of Vince's '66 Pontiac GTO in something that, given a couple more years, would be described as alluring.

The blonde one smirked. The dark one blushed and ducked his head, but not before Tana caught a glance from beneath his long tangled bangs that was very nearly something like possession and very pointed at his older companion.

'In the cooler. Inside.' Blondie thumbed over his shoulder. He rolled ,hips first ,off the fender of the '67 Impala whose hood he'd been under moments ago and sauntered toward the shade of the quonset garage. It was all the invitation Janey needed. She followed, quick enough to stay in conversational range, but slow enough to work the purposeful sway of her own hips, casting the young one a brief I'll-get-to-you-in-a-second-sugar look as she passed that he blushed three shades darker beneath.

Tana shook her head a little in bemused resignation and followed after them.

'That _was_ her boyfriend, right?' the dark haired one murmured as Tana passed, barely audible above the hum of summer insects and the drone of a compressor somewhere in the garage. But she heard and shrugged, feeling a strange urge to apologize for her friend's overt flirting. 

'Never stopped her before,' she said.

He looked after them a moment, a kind of heat in his eyes that wasn't caused by the unseasonably searing South Dakota spring, and then ducked his head down further and followed Tana inside. 

'I didn't, uh, catch your name,' Janey was saying as Mr. College Boy Blonde was popping the top on her soda and slurping away the fizz that threatened to overflow in a move that Tana couldn't describe as anything less than criminally sexy, before he handed it over to Janey who took a long, slow sip, being sure to let the tip of her tongue trace the edge of the can for a full second or so where his mouth had been.

'Dean,' he replied, popping the top on another can and grinning. 'And that there's Sammy.'

'Sam,' the darker boy corrected automatically, going for the cooler. He slid a shy look at Tana. 'Get you anything?'

'Mmm, please,' she said softly and gave him a grateful smile when he handed over the semi-cold can without any of the pomp or overtures his friend had undertaken.

'Where are you from?' Janey asked, settling her hip against a stack of packing crates, instinctively arranging herself in an artful display of lines and curves. 'Because I'm sure I'd have noticed if you were from around here.'

'Kind of all over,' Dean said. 'We don't often get up here more than a day or two at a time. At least not anymore.'

His eyes flashed for a second as his voice dipped at the end of his thought, and Tana swore there was regret behind that green granite gaze and anger, too, maybe.

'Well, then I'm glad we caught you.' Janey smiled wide and earnest.

It looked real enough, and it wasn't like she was being insincere. Not intentionally. Many a boy had been duped by that wholesome innocence, but not, it seemed, this man named Dean.

His eyes shuttered closed on whatever Tana had caught a glimpse of, and he returned Janey's smile kilowatt for kilowatt. 

'We're here a couple more days,' Dean said. 'Sammy was feelin' kind of under the weather, so we pitched tent for a bit longer.'

'Sam,' Sam corrected again under his breath and turned away from the battle of flirts with a glint of disgust in his eye.

It was then Tana could see three long, angry red welts over his right shoulder blade. One looked like it may only recently have had stitches out.

'Ouch…' she said automatically.

He looked up, grimacing. 'Sorry…'

'No, no. I didn't mean—' Tana faltered. 'It just looks pretty painful. Can I ask how it happened?'

'I was being stupid—'

'It was an accident—'

They both spoke at the same time, and for a second Tana felt the air between them charge like the held breath for a lightening strike. Dean's eyes were fierce and bright, and Tana wondered how she could have even for a moment thought them cold.

'Sammy.' Dean's tone was as fierce as his gaze and more final than the crack of a gavel.

Sam gave a quick jerk of his head in rebellion, the muscles in his jaw jumping in anger or frustration, and mumbled, 'Gonna go see if they found their part.'

But as he passed Dean, the man's hand whipped out and grabbed the back of Sam's waistband, jerking him to stillness.

Tana thought it a little odd Dean hadn't grabbed his friend's wrist or arm or shoulder. She was ready to shrug it off until Sam drew back half a step, turning into Dean, leaning toward him, reaching like a blossom would for the sun, or the tides the moon.

Dean pulled him back, straightening up into Sam's space from his casual lean against the tool bench. His hand loosened on the denim of the other boy's jeans but didn't let go, and the backs of his fingers brushed into the trough of Sam's spine in a gesture that Tana could only call a caress. Because that's what it was. The gentlest contact of skin against skin, so subtle and sweet it pinched at her heart, making it ache at the profound contrast of the touch to the hardened man who delivered it.

'Don't be a little bitch, Sammy,' Dean whispered.

From anyone else in any other tone, it would have been a threat, or a jibe, or a rebuke; but Dean's voice was soft, without edge, full of regret and a depth of sadness Tana's insufficient years had no capacity to plumb.

Sam's limbs bled their tension like water slowly leaking away into rock. 'Jerk,' he replied softly. But he went unresisting when Dean pulled him back to lean on the bench beside him. 

Sam sipped his soda and kept his head down, and Tana kept her mouth shut, but her gaze skipped to Janey to see what she'd made of the interchange. It was obvious, however, Janey's field of vision did not go beyond Dean's pale, muscled chest, lean abs, and trim hips. Whatever had passed between these boys, Janey was oblivious to, but Tana was suddenly fairly certain that this time her friend was playing to a disinterested audience.

'So, what is it you do that keeps you away from home so much?' Janey asked, still playing sweetly innocent for all it was worth, because she ascribed very much to the theory that men loved to talk if someone was listening, especially if that someone was a beautiful woman.

More interested in keeping Dean's attention engaged than in the content of any answer he might give, she missed the flinch that rode briefly across Sam's shoulders and the pinch at the corners of Dean's eyes when the word 'home' passed her pretty lips. The reaction was brief, though. Brief enough that Tana had to squint to be sure she'd actually seen anything at all, and Dean grinned wide enough that the effect, underlined by its lack of mirth, was nearly garish, and still Janey refused to see.

'We save the world,' he said, tipping his soda in a jaunty salute, silent recognition to who or what only he was privy to.

'Oh, are you in the military?' Janey asked, excited. 'I just _knew_ you were a fighting man.'

Tana wanted to crawl in a hole the way Janey was gushing, and then she pulled the final play and reached out to lay a dainty hand on Dean's arm.

'I just love a man in his uniform,'

It was a cross between a Saturday night sitcom gone wrong and a bad romance novel. Dean was visibly biting the inside of his cheek to restrain his laughter, and Tana wanted to groan aloud and dive for cover under the nearest workbench. As ridiculous as the whole thing was, though, it elicited a very real reaction. At least from Sam.

He bristled invisibly. No part of him moved save the flicker and flash of his gold flecked eyes. He didn't even lift his head, but Tana was sure, had he been a cat, he would have hissed his rage. Had he been of the jungle variety, he would have simply taken off Janey's offending hand.

It wasn't until that moment either that Tana realized Dean had never taken his hand from Sam, and now it pressed, warm and firm, to the hollow curve at the base of his spine, soothing and restraining at the same time. The corner of Dean's mouth was quirked up again, but this time in a sheepish apology that only Sam would have seen except that Tana was watching with intent now. 

Sam blew an irritated breath up into his floppy bangs, and Dean trailed his fingers lazily up and down Sam's back. Tana imagined that hand stroking her for a moment and the thought left her feeling so heady and unexpectedly hungry, it was no wonder Sam's every muscle purred contentment like the feline to which she'd so readily compared him.

Some base survival instinct embedded in her DNA must have warned Janey, though, of the invisible boundary she had crossed, and she withdrew her hand slow and easy, still smiling, but with a nervous edge to it like she had suddenly realized the definition of 'feral' in the wild animal beneath her hand.

Dean's mouth tipped toward a smirk again, and he slid an inch closer to Sam against the bench's edge, knocking their hips together. They leaned, fitting into each other's space as easy and necessary as nature moved to fill a vacuum, leaving nothing between but heat and sweat-slick skin sliding under the shift of muscle and bone, and something… Something that tickled Tana's peripheral vision, staying on the edge of things, daring her to look straight at it.

'We, uh, don't do uniforms,' Dean said, his gaze sliding off of Janey and leveling on Tana, sending sparks of wanting and warning tripping after each other down her spine so that she wasn't sure whether to shiver in need or trepidation. His smile broadened and Tana watched his fingers curl possessively at Sam's hip out of Janey's line of sight. 'Uniform's are too…restrictive for the likes of us.'

Janey made a musical little sound of piqued interest. 'Oh! Now, I'm curious. Do tell. How is it you save the world, then?'

Dean's smile faltered, slipped and slid—destroyed by the sharp sting of some scabbed over memory Janey's persistent question poked and scratched until it bled—and then fell away, dragging back the chill of sadness and regret into his eyes.

The change in Sam, in response to his companion's sudden distress, was immediate. His hostile irritation evaporated. He became taller, broader, without ever moving; enveloped Dean, wrapped around him—there was no shift of arms or legs or hands, no flex of muscle, save the turn and dip of his head, the swallow of a hastily taken breath—and made himself a shield, body and soul, between this man and the world.

Dean rested back into him, body unwinding, face going slack of its tension, lips easing back into the semblance of a smile, but it it did not reach his eyes this time.

Tana was dizzied by the effect. She felt like Alice through the looking glass where nothing was quite what it appeared to be. Or was very much as it appeared to be, only she was unaccustomed to the suggestion of it.

Something here had a name. It's shape and form were clear, but she could not draw out the sounds to call it by what it was.

'Janey! We found the part!'

Dashel's voice was a jagged blade to the tenuous silence, and Tana flinched at the sound.

'Prom night is saved!'

Janey clapped her hands together in glee, laughing her approval as Dash held up the found part in triumph, as though moments ago she had not been focused like a beautiful and unsuspected predator on another conquest altogether. 

Tana sighed and turned back to Sam and Dean to thank them for the sodas and the parts and apologize for…whatever it was that had just happened, but she was drawn up short. 

Dean's gaze was on hers again, and he smiled. It was warm and real and knowing. He winked at her. They were standing apart now, a few inches of space against the bench, but that mere distance changed the structure of them; and only in the negative space could Tana now find the word she had seen all along….

 _Lovers_.


End file.
